Individuals make choices depending on their desires, feelings, values, or principles. In a team, things are slightly different. There, choices will be seen by others, commented on, questioned, or evaluated. Team members will thus seek to follow the leader’s directives and guidance whenever they are compatible with the team’s unwritten rules.

The more frequently leaders let their choices be ruled by their desires and feelings, the more they risk making choices that are incompatible with yesterday’s choices and can easily be overruled by unwritten rules in the team. Unwritten rules are a representation of successful choices the team and its members made in the past.

A leader using values and principles as foundations for his choices makes them more consistent. Thus, he makes it easier for the team to follow the given leadership and adapt its unwritten rules.

It’s still no guarantee for success, but it paves the way to act together.